McConnell implies Trump may have gone a step too far
While Senate Republicans cast about for some legislative hodgepodge to satisfy both President Trump and House Democrats in order to prevent another government shutdown, Mitch McConnell was saying, publicly, that he was “for whatever works that prevents the level of dysfunction we’ve seen on full display here the last month.” This not only addressed the narrow matter of the border wall standoff, but also spoke to calls from Democrats and some Republicans to create a legislative mechanism to prevent both the President and the legislature from using government shutdowns as a bargaining tool on any legislation. McConnell, with the weight of 35 years in the Senate and at least six government shutdowns behind him, commented, firmly “I don’t like shutdowns. I don’t think they work for anybody.”
If such a mechanism could be put in place, that would take away what Trump feels is his strongest bargaining chip. His other chip, the declaration of a national emergency, is proving so far to be too hot for even Trump to handle.
This would be the closest thing to a public rebuke of Donald Trump that Mitch McConnell has delivered since the Republican primary season in 2016 when McConnell supported Rand Paul and made evident his disdain for the eventual winner. He is now, obliquely, standing up to Trump’s cavalier use of the federal government as a hostage in his all-or-nothing campaign to get $5.7 billion for an expansion of the magnificent border wall.
By framing the shutdown dilemma as a matter of process rather than substance, McConnell may dodge a counterattack by the President. He may think Trump owes him something for his month-long refusal to bring to the Senate floor a veto-proof bill to re-open the government. He may think that Trump himself believes he owes McConnell something. Enough to keep his trap shut for a few hours.
A Washington Post account of the current cafeteria-style attempts at lawmaking in the Senate, to include McConnell’s comments, can be found at Senate Republicans flail about for compromise.
Below is my original, two-day-old post in regard to the Wall and the Shutdown, with a look back to when Ronald Reagan launched the conservative campaign to chip away at the government in service to the moneyed Ruling Class.
Government Shutdown? No Problem!
Who Needs a Government, Anyway?
Two days ago I heard a hard-right conservative say, blithely, that a government shutdown was a bargaining tool. (This was during an interview on NPR; unfortunately I don’t recall the gentleman’s name, but I think it’s safe to say he spoke for his bloc.) The context was, Trump had decided to re-open the government temporarily, which this conservative acknowledged was probably the best thing to do. NOT because the country needs a functioning government, but because, and perhaps only because, Trump was losing political points.
This comment reflects a bedrock pillar of right-wing ideology: the government doesn’t do much for us. Or worse, it actively harms us—in the words of Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s, “the government isn’t the solution to our problem; the government is the problem.”
The Right Wing took this government-is-the-problem meme—normalized by a popular political figure—supercharged it, and drove it foot to the floor through today, when a Steve Bannon makes “the deconstruction of the administrative state” a keystone of the presidential agenda.
The value of the government in itself is what’s been most at stake in the face-off between Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi (and their water-carriers Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer).
It so happened that resistance to Trump’s Wall was the specific provocation for the shutdown. But it doesn’t take much for Republicans—particularly the hard right—to shut down the government, which they see as largely intrusive, obstructive, predatory, and parasitic wherever it isn’t just plain useless. It’s THE PROBLEM.
They are wrong—not that the federal government doesn’t have its small-p problems, but it serves the public in countless ways that no private industry or collection of private industries can do, or would ever seek to do. That division flows from the difference in the primary purposes of the two types of organizations: the government is to serve the people, private business is to make money.*
That’s why the Democrats had to hold the line. It’s bigger than just keeping Trump from holding the government hostage in the future, it’s about anyone holding the government hostage to further any narrow interest such as a border wall, anti-abortion legislation, selling off public lands to private developers, and so forth.
Democrats to blame for the long shutdown? Tell me another whopper
Conservatives had some success in blaming the prolonged shutdown on Democrats. Their argument: the shutdown was the only way, short of declaring a national immigration emergency, that Mr. Trump could get his Wall, because of the intransigence of Democrats. Counter-arguments: (1) Trump himself publicly declared he, not Democrats, would take responsibility for a shutdown; (2) if the Wall was of such great importance, why couldn’t he get it when Republicans held both houses of Congress?** (3) the Democrats had shown themselves open, in the past, to the use of hard physical barriers in a few places along the border; (4) most importantly, shutting down the government isn’t a bargaining tool, it’s a wrecking ball.
There’s talk of legislation to prevent shutting down the government in the future. Obviously it would never pass the current Senate, even if legal, but it’s a good start. [Note: following McConnell’s shift the odds of passing the Senate got a little better.]
The will of the people must be heard. The will is, let’s keep the lights turned on.
================ footnotes=================
* There’s nothing intrinsically anti-social about purposing to make money; for-profit enterprise brings us many benefits. But when it harms the public interest it must be stopped.
** Because it was unpopular. Trump, with his invocation of marauding, raping, thieving, terrorist-infested caravans marching in the thousands up through Mexico, succeeded in making it somewhat less unpopular, but it’s a hard sell. It’s made a harder sell by lying. Trump doesn’t get that, because he’s been able to sell things all his life by lying and cheating, and now he’s found that when everyone is watching, it becomes a wee bit more difficult.
See shutdown malaise
See Mulvaney weighs in:
* private weather forecasting is all very well, but it is the government’s data that private companies use, relying on government instruments and historical databases that makes it possible
this blowback is 40 years tardy but whose keeping track? Finally, the dems or some dems are starting to develop a spine and will have to keep being a force to be reckoned with.